Dispelling the Islamic Myth of Mubahila

Eid al-Mubahila is annual commemoration of the event of Mubahila occurred in 631 AD. This was the day, at the invitation of Muhammad, when Muhammad and the representatives of the Christians of Najran gathered to debate – and imprecate – each other.

The term mubahila in Arabic means “debate” but it has the additional meaning of “imprecate” (i.e., curse) as well. This dual association hails from the dynamics of debate in the nomadic cultures which first were deceived to accept Islam. To the tribes of the desert who became Islam’s first converts, a debate was not so much matching two arguments against each other to establish one proposition as having more merit than the other as it was threatening and cursing until the other person backed down. In the west it would be called a “shouting match”, not the calm debate to which Western Society is accustomed.

It remains to this day a sound primer for Islamic techniques of argument. Once an Islamic argument is proven incorrect or wrong, that the information they are giving is incorrect or does not exist, a Muslim will “shout, curse, threaten, insult” the other person or group to get them to “back down”, copying Mubahila and call this a victory if the other person discontinues the argument.

In reality, it is not a victory as Mubahila was not a true victory. It is the weakness of the Islamic argument replaced with bellicosity. This a basic tenet of Islam, threaten to gain acceptance and when that does not work, use violence, intimidation and murder, to advance the cause of the domination of Islam over all people, all nations of the world.